


Ragged Company

by Mohini



Series: Ghosts [27]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Recreational Drug Use, Vomiting, chosen family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25004347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: The girl is going to be the death of him.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Ghosts [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1100523
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Ragged Company

The girl is going to kill him. James learned young that there are no certainties in life. But this one comes close.

Case in point, he’s watching his very decidedly underage sister in a club that absolutely did not check her ID with any degree of scrutiny on the way in. She hasn’t seen him yet. He isn’t sure if he wants her to. It’s not like it’s any kind of secret that she parties hard. Nor that she’s way too good at getting her hands on things she’s no business touching. He chooses not to think about the little baggie of pills in his own pocket.

He’s halfway through slipping one of the little discs of happiness under his tongue when she is suddenly inches from him.

“The fuck are you following me?”

Alrighty then, happy high is clearly not on the menu of Tasha delights for the evening.

“I’m not the one who used a fake to get in the place,” he shoots back. If she’s going to be a bitch, he can give as good as he gets.

“Didn’t use any ID,” she grumbles, and for just a moment, he feels bad. “Don’t need it if you’re fucking the bartender.”

He groans. There is absolutely no way to know if she’s dead serious or trying to get a rise out of him. Either option is unsettling. She’s rarely hostile toward him. Something’s not right but in this mood she’s not going to give him any tells as to what that thing is. Or isn’t for that matter. He’s out of practice and not sober enough to try connecting the dots.

“You said you were waiting for me!” the voice is painful levels of shrill, and definitely unholy high. It belongs to a skinny, drugged out looking mess of a girl wrapping arms around Tasha in a way James absolutely knows she hates. The microsecond of flinch and grimace confirms it for him before she plasters on a smile.

“Sorry, saw someone I used to know,” she replies, glaring at James as if daring him to contradict her. She turns and follows the girl back into the depths of the club.

Whatever is on tap for tonight, James isn’t sticking around to see it. He was her all knight in too small armor when they were kids. If she needs him, she’ll tell him. Or someone will. It wouldn’t be the first weird call since they found each other again.

He leaves the club, heading into a different one a few blocks down. It’s a rare night that he ventures out without Steve to chill and trip out to the lights and music. The little disc of ecstasy is beginning to release its chemical spell into the tightly wound synapses of his brain and damned if running into his nightmare of a baby sister is going to bring him down.

Several hours and a long, pleasant walk home later, he finds a scrawny bundle of red hair and regret on his sofa. Steve’s next to her, not close enough to touch but near enough to make sure she keeps breathing. It doesn’t escape James’ notice that the trash bin usually stashed under his desk has been relocated to floor at the end of the sofa.

“Showed up a while ago. She won’t talk to me,” Steve explains in response to the bumbling inquiry James stammers out.

Tasha’s eyes are red and puffy. She either been sick or crying. James kneels in front of her, putting his hand on her thigh, barely above her knobby knee.

“Hey there,” he tells her.

She blinks at him, then launches herself off the cushion and into his chest. They tumble to the carpet in a heap and it’s all James can do to keep her head from bouncing off the floor.

“Jesus,” he mutters.

“M’sorry I’m bad,” she whispers back, before what James is fairly certain is a good third her weight worth of alcohol is baptizing the both of them.

Steve shouts something James can’t decipher and then Tasha’s being yanked off him. She’s screaming, kicking, and still retching.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Steve tries to tell her, but she’s too far gone to understand. Instead she yells something else and manages to thrash hard enough that he loses his grip on her. She hits the floor with an ominous thud. James isn’t sure if he should be grateful or mortified that he knows the sound well enough to be sure that nothing was broken on the way down.

Tasha rolls onto hands and knees, gagging into the carpet and shaking her head back and forth. She’s trying to say something but can’t stop retching long enough to form actual words.

James glares at Steve and crouches close to her.

“Tasha love,” he soothes. “Just breathe, sweetheart. Just breathe. Jamie’s got you.”

He doesn’t have her. If he had her, this would not have happened. He’s only just barely begun to know her again, and he’s becoming ever more concerned for what exactly happened to the risk taking but largely self-preserving girl he knew.

He puts a hand on her back, running fingers up and down her spine until she’s finally emptied out enough to settle down. She falls sideways into him, covered in bile and snot and god only knows what form of liquor. He hopes fervently that the reddish streaks are cranberry juice and not blood.

Once she’s been fairly calm for a few minutes, he eases her to sitting with her head cradled against his shoulder.

“You’re a mess, Tash,” he tells her softly. “Lemme wash you up?”

“Can’t,” she whimpers, and he’s confused.

“You got some aversion to water now?” he asks her. He’s not sure if he’s teasing or not. For all he knows she might.

“Your arm,” she explains. Even blitzed, the kid is trying to protect him. It was like this when they were young. The pair of them against the world.

“It comes off,” he tells her. She knows this. Or at least he thinks she does. No matter. He hauls her to her feet and half carries, half drags her to the bathroom. Steve follows behind like a forlorn puppy, and James agrees to let him take the myoelectric prosthesis back to their room to stash it on the charging dock. It’s technically water resistant, would hold up fine to being splashed. But he suspects he’s going to end up more than a little soaked by the end of this particular endeavor. He slips the silicone sleeve off his stump and hands it to Steve as well. Then he looks pointedly down the hall and the other man retreats, closing the door behind him.

Tasha’s taken to gently running a finger along the grooves of the scar tissue. “Shiny,” she whispers. It’s both observation and benediction, the skin is indeed shiny with both sweat and the odd texture of healed burns. “Hurts?” she asks, the soft lilt to her voice making clear that she is genuinely asking the question.

“Not as often as it did,” he replies. It’s the truth. The surgeons did a good job on the salvage, and the skin healed well. He’s trying to figure out what else to tell her when she presses her lips to the space where the scar tissue and softer skin come together.

“M’sorry,” she tells him. “M’sorry I lost you. M’sorry.” The words fade into a garbled repetition, their vowels lengthening until it’s no longer decipherable what she’s trying to say. There are tears, though. Little drops of salty sadness falling on his arm as she lays her face against his bicep.

“Shhh,” he tries, running fingers gently through her curls and hoping the motion provides some sort of comfort.

He thinks she’s settling down, going a bit more still, a bit more silent, until she pulls abruptly away and lunges for the bathroom trash, burying her face in it and heaving hard. He pats her back, tries to keep her hair out of the mess, though that’s long since a lost cause. When she’s down to empty retching, he pulls her upright, telling her to breathe, to hold the breath, to let it go slowly. She flops toward him a few moments later, trembly and clutching at him with one spindly hand.

“Tasha love, let’s clean you up and get you to bed,” he directs after she’s been still and quiet for a good bit.

She nods her assent and he scoots them toward the bath, reaching up and turning the taps.

“Can you strip out for me?”

“Yeah.” The answer is bitten off with a sound that could either be sadness or resignation. She slips her shirt over her head, shucks off her skirt and underthings. Her feet were bare to begin with, leaving her in naught but skin.

James drags his own vomit-soaked shirt off, ditches his jeans but keeps the underthings where they are. Close as they once were, there remain limits he’s not testing. Especially not tonight.

They climb into the tub together, Tasha burying her head against his chest as he runs a soapy cloth over her skin, talking to her as he works so that she’ll stay grounded in the here and now. The hair presents a challenge, getting the stringy gobs of vomit out without two hands to work with, but she’s clinging to him like a frightened animal and he’s not about to tell her she has to let go.

The water is nearing the end of its warmth by the time they’re both properly clean, but she’s responding more readily to his requests to move around and climb from the tub, which he’s willing to consider solid progress toward sobering up. For his part, James is pretty grateful for the lingering softness from his fading high. He’s no doubt it’s helping with keeping him chill enough to settle her.

He pats her dry, wraps her in fresh towels, and slips a towel around his own hips before opening the door and shepherding her to his bedroom. Steve comes like a loyal dog, trying to help, mostly just fumbling about. James sends him for towels to toss on the bed, just in case. She hasn’t been sick in a while, but there’s no guarantee that she hasn’t more sins to purge.

“Jamie?” she asks him.

“M’right here, Tash. Right here.” The words are automatic, a script he learnt when they were kids. She needs to be certain. Has been abandoned too many times to truly trust him when he says he’s staying. Hell, he feels the same way half the time. He lost count of the nights he’s woken up in a panic, only to stare at Steve’s sleeping form next to him and repeat a similar litany until his breath steadies and his heart calms.

“Jamie?” she repeats.

“Yeah,” this time he puts his hand against her shoulder, cupping the joint in his palm and pressing in a bit. Hoping that’s enough connection to ground her.

“My Jamie,” she babbles, eyes slipping shut as she loses consciousness.

Steve takes the opportunity to hand him some clothes, and he climbs into loose pajama pants and a faded shirt from some charity run Steve did a while back. Tasha’s naked under the towel she’s swaddled in, but James can’t decide if it’s reasonable to dress her or wait until she’s aware enough to help. He opts for putting the proffered boxers and shirt within easy grabbing distance and climbs into bed with her. He pulls her close, the movements of securing her airway and propping her onto one side as much a part of him as his own skin.

The sky is just beginning to go pink at the edges of the horizon when she stirs. It’s just the tiniest hitch of her shoulders, a miniscule gasp of a breath, but James rolls her belly down, head up, hooking a finger at the corner of her mouth to ensure whatever comes up doesn’t get sucked down into her lungs. It’s not much, just a couple strings of mucus, but the process wakes her.

She stares at him with wide eyes, and he can practically watch the connections coming together as she figures out where she is, who she’s with, and what she isn’t wearing.

“Sweet fuck,” she mutters.

“Nope, that we absolutely did not do,” the reply is automatic. A ritual left over from years past.

“Do I want to know?” she asks him.

“No. You’re good now?”

“D’you have aspirin? Or oxy? Fuck my head hurts.”

“I think we might need to start you on water, Tash. You haven’t kept your own spit down in a while.”

“I hate Jaeger.”

“Mmm, that I won’t argue. Shit’s awful.”

He rolls away from her long enough to grab the bottle of water from his bedside table and hand it to her. She takes a sip, swallows hard and screws her eyes shut.

“It’s okay,” he tells her, pulling his prosthetic from the charging dock and rolling the protective sleeve over his stump before reaching for her again. She belches, and the water dribbles back over her chin.

“Maybe not quite okay yet,” he concedes. “C’mere ya nightmare.”

She scoots over to the clean side of the bed, curling up in his lap like a cat.

“M’sorry.”

“I’ve seen you worse. Just be still. It’ll pass.”

She nods, closes her eyes, and he resumes petting her hair. The girl is definitely, absolutely going to be the death of him. But he’s grateful she’s still got enough sense to come find him so she isn’t the death of herself instead.


End file.
